I've been trying to determine if even a relatively small memory card (512MB old, slow memory stick duo) can help system performance on a Sony UX390N (1GB RAM, 32GB SSD disk -- all flash already).

My test app was Windows Live Writer. Without the memory stick in, it loaded in about 9 seconds the first time and then 7 seconds after that. However, with the memory stick in, it still loaded at about 9 seconds the first time, but then would start to load in about 5 seconds.

This is completely non-scientific but it shows that it can help out even if the main hard disk is already rather fast -- in this case, it's fully solid state so it's a similar form. I'm guessing that the responsiveness boost here comes from the fact that Vista can read from both at once without saturating the higher levels of bus bandwidth.

It sits flush in the machine, so there is no reason for me to not have it in (unless I find it hurts the battery life by continually moving the cache around -- it used 50% processor for over a minute to load up the cache right after insert). A faster one might do even more good, too. It seems to only write at about 2-3MB/sec and doesn't appear to read much faster than that.

Posted by Shane on March 27, 2007 7:30 AM | Permalink